SoulFood's Reviews

Dirty Harry

Mediocre if not one of the WORST Asian restaurants I’ve ever been to. Having vast experience in Asian cuisine all over the world, having worked in restaurants, and an enthusiastic cook – Harry’s Singaporean Chilli Crab restaurant delivered one of the WORST experiences in service and food.

We entered quite late for dinner, asked if we could still dine and they accepted – no smiles though. Within five minutes of supplying menus, the waitress tells us ‘we are closing soon so hurry up and order’ literally. Entertaining a guest from overseas, eager to show her this restaurant we’ve heard so much about – it isn’t starting well at all.

Ordered some Choy Sum vegetables with Bean Curd and Sambal Fish. The vegetables are purely STALKS – no nutritional, tasty dark green leaves but just the pale green stalks. I know this is the cheapest part of the vegetable and it is an INSULT to serve solely the stalks to anyone – whether in a restaurant or in your own home. The dish is presented in an haphazard manner with tasteless Bean Curd looking like pale slops. The Sambal Fish is again tasteless and arrives without any tang of chilli, prawn paste or hearty colour or aroma. Just a watered down sauce.

We bring all these issues up with the Manager who immediately replies –
- When you order the Choy Sum vegetables, you never receive the green leaves, you are only ever given the stalks – which we know is false in any diner’s experience.
- She then back tracks and says – maybe the kitchen has run out of leaves. And that she saw some leaves served to other patrons earlier in the evening. So it was just a one off problem for us. A problem we could have been alerted to prior to dining.

Her response is defensive, non-chalant with facial gestures indicating she wasn’t willing to listen, apologise or compromise at the least. In reality she is implying they DO serve the WHOLE vegetable – leaves and all and were are unfortunate with no reason. This all happened whilst the smiling Harry was present in the restaurant walking past our table at least once. Is he aware of the arrogance of his staff?

So much for overall service and food. Maybe the crabs are delicious but please don’t rely on this over promoted city location as the only place for genuine chilli crab or other Asian or Singaporean cuisine. Go out into the suburbs or other inner city spots where the food and service is FAR SUPERIOR, where Asian restaurant standards are much higher to retain their daily loyal patronage from the vast Asian communities. Communities who know their food, where talk of the town can make or break a restaurant. We all just want honest food with some customer service at the very least.

Reviewed on: February 14, 2007